California's Caltech's Exoplanet catalog!!!!!

New Visualization Shows Incredible Variety of Extraterrestrial Worlds
by NANCY ATKINSON on NOVEMBER 3, 2015

This poster shows more than 500 exoplanets discovered before October 2015 arranged according to their temperature and density.
Credit and copyright: Martin Vargic. Used by permission.

Astronomers spy nursery of baby exoplanets

Image: This image shows an artist’s impression of the 10 hot Jupiter exoplanets studied by astronomer David Sing and his colleagues
using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. From top left to lower left, these planets are WASP-12b, WASP-6b, WASP-31b, WASP-39b, HD 189733b,
HAT-P-12b, WASP-17b, WASP-19b, HAT-P-1b and HD 209458b. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Sing (University of Exeter).
A couple of things to note in the image. The colors are vivid but as this news release explains,
they are purely for illustrative purposes. We have little data on the color of any of these worlds with the exception of HD 189733b,
sometimes called the ‘blue planet.’ The cloud patterns shown here are also theoretical, based largely on what we see on Jupiter.

ET's not talking—and we want to know why. Here are some possible explanations.

The Planets Foundation

PRINCETON TEAM DIRECTLY OBSERVES PLANETS AROUND NEARBY STARS

This image from the CHARIS instrument shows planets located around a star in the planetary system HR8799.
Image: N. Jeremy Kasdin and team.
CHARIS was designed and built by a team led by N. Jeremy Kasdin, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering
at Princeton University. It took them five years to build CHARIS.
The spectrograph sits inside a 500 lb case that measures 30x30x12. Inside that case, it’s kept at -223.15 Celsius (50 Kelvin, -369 F.)
The CHARIS instrument has nine mirrors, five filters, two prism assemblies and a microlens array.
The microlens array is a special optical device with an array of tiny lenses etched into its surface.

SEPTEMBER 28, 2018 BY EVAN GOUGH
Technosignatures are NASA’s New Target for Detecting Other Civilizations in Space.
Wait. What’s a Technosignature?

What are Technosignatures?
Technosignatures are simply evidence of technology. They’re the effects or signature
of technological use. The most obvious example might be radio waves, but some experts
in technosignatures reject those, because the universe is riddled with
radio waves produced by natural sources.
NASA is targeting technosignatures in its renewed effort to detect alien civilizations.
Congress asked NASA to re-boot its search for other civilizations a few months ago.
Their first step towards that goal is the NASA Technosignatures Workshop,
held in Houston from September 26th to 28th, 2018.

Kepler exoplanet candidates as of June 2017. Will some of these planets have technosignatures?
Image: NASA/Kepler

NASA Is Taking a New Look at Searching for Life Beyond Earth

The Gemini Planet Imager

THE VORTEX CORONAGRAPH A GAME CHANGER FOR SEEING CLOSE IN EXOPLANETS

The vortex coronagraph at the Keck Observatory captured this image of the protoplanetary disk
surrounding the young star HD 141569, which is about 380 light years from Earth.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The vortex mask shown at left is made out of synthetic diamond. When viewed with a scanning electron microscope, right,
the “vortex” microstructure of the mask is revealed.
Image credit: University of Liège/Uppsala University

The vortex coronagraph captured this image of the brown dwarf PIA21417. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

E X O P L A N E T K2-3D

Figure 1.
This planet could be an important discovery in the search for life on other planets
By Nicole Kiefert | Published: Monday, November 28, 2016
Researchers from the Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo, and the Astrobiology Center
have nailed down an important property of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet while it was in transit.
The team used the MuSCAT instrument on the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory’s 188-cm telescope to study the extrasolar planet,
called K2-3d, discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft in 2015.

Figure 2: Transiting planets located in the habitable zone (the orbital region where a planet
could hold liquid water on the surface), plotted in terms of planet radius vs. host star magnitude (brightness).
Black circles represent confirmed planets discovered by the Kepler mission and white circles
represent unconfirmed planet candidates. The orange triangles represent the Earth sized planets
TRAPPIST-1c and TRAPPIST-1d observed 40 light-years away by a ground based telescope.
TRAPPIST-1c and TRAPPIST-1d are thought to be just outside the habitable zone,
but they are plotted for reference. The host star of K2-3d (red star) is the brightest in this figure.
Credit: Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)

E X O P L A N E T S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Formation of Planets in a Protoplanetary Disk

Published on May 17, 2013
The artist conception shows a newly formed star surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk of dust and gas.
Debris coalesces to create rocky 'planetesimals' that collide and grow to eventually form planets.
The results of this study show that small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content
suggesting that their existence might be widespread in the galaxy.
Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave
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Astronomers spy nursery of baby exoplanets

Figure 1. Image of HD 100546 obtained with the Gemini Planet Imager at near-infrared wavelengths (1.6 microns).
The cross shows the position of the star, the green hatched lines show the region interior to which GPI's coronagraph
blocks our view of the system. HD 100546 b appears as a bright point source sitting on a finger of disk emission.
Astronomers report that this system, surrounding a star known as HD 100546,
is giving us a glimpse back in time to see what other more developed
exoplanet systems looked like in their adolescence.
By Gemini Observatory, Hilo, Hawaii | Published: Wednesday, December 02, 2015

Image: A team of astronomers observed the planetary disc surrounding the star RX J1615,
which lies in the constellation of Scorpius, 600 light-years from Earth.
The observations show a complex system of concentric rings surrounding the young star,
forming a shape resembling a titanic version of the rings that encircle Saturn.
Such an intricate sculpting of rings in a protoplanetary disc has only been imaged a handful of times before.
Credit: ESO, J. de Boer et al.

The planetary disc surrounding the star HD 97048 in the constellation of Chameleon, about 500 light-years from Earth.
The juvenile disc is formed into concentric rings. This symmetry is in contrast to most protoplanetary systems which contain
asymmetrical spiral arms, voids and vortexes. The displayed image is a composite derived from two independent observations
that targeted the inner and outer regions of this disc. The central part of the image appears dark because SPHERE blocks out
the light from the brilliant central star to reveal the much fainter structures surrounding it.
Credit: ESO, C. Ginski et al.

FIRST DETAILED IMAGE OF ACCRETION DISK AROUND A YOUNG STAR

An illustration of an accretion disk feeding a central young star, or protostar, and the gaseous jet ejected from the protostar.
Credit: Yin-Chih Tsai/ASIAA

This artist’s concept shows a young stellar object and the whirling accretion disk surrounding it. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Jet and disk in the HH 212 protostellar system:
(a) A composite image of the jet, produced by combining images from different telescopes.
(b) Close-up of the center of the dusty disk at 8 AU resolution.
(c) An accretion disk model that can reproduce the observed dust emission in the disk.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Lee et al.

Combined ALMA/VLA image of HL Tau.
CREDIT: Carrasco-Gonzalez, et al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF. - See more click here
New images of a young star made with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA)
reveal what scientists think may be the very earliest stages in the formation of planets.
The scientists used the VLA to see unprecedented detail of the inner portion of a dusty disk surrounding the star,
some 450 light-years from Earth. -

Artist�s illustration of WASP-18b, an exoplanet about ten times Jupiter�s mass located some 330 light years from Earth,
along with optical and x-ray data in the lower right. Credit: NASA/Chandra

A series of images taken between November 2013 to April 2015 with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) on the Gemini South telescope in Chile shows the exoplanet β Pic b orbiting the star β Pictoris, which lies over 60 light-years from Earth. In the images, the star is at the centre of the left-hand edge of the frame; it is hidden by the Gemini Planet Imager’s coronagraph. We are looking at the planet’s orbit almost edge-on; the planet is closer to the Earth than the star. The images are based on observations described in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, 16 September 2015 and whose lead author is Maxwell Millar-Blanchaer. GPI is a groundbreaking instrument that was developed by an international team led by Stanford University’s Prof. Bruce Macintosh (a U of T alumnus) and the University of California Berkeley’s Prof. James Graham (former director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, U of T). Image credit: M. Millar-Blanchaer, University of Toronto; F. Marchis, SETI Institute

A STAR WITH A DISK OF WATER ICE? MEET HD 100546
8 Apr , 2016 by Evan Gough

Young stars have a disk of gas and dust around them called a protoplanetary disk.
Out of this disk planets are formed, and the presence of water ice in the disc affects where
different types of planets form.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomy Cast Ep. 388: Megastructures

Streamed live on Oct 19, 2015
Join +Fraser Cain and +Pamela Gay for a live episode of Astronomy Cast. We'll record our 30-minute show,
and then stay tuned for another episode today!
Ep. 388: Space Structures
This week astronomers announced an unusual transit signal from another star. Although it’s most likely a natural phenomenon, one remote possibility is that this is some kind of alien megastructure. Freeman Dyson and others have considered this idea for decades. Today we’ll talk about the kinds of structures that aliens might want to build.
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Habitable Zones

Habitable Zone Infographic

Diagram showing the habitable zones of the Solar System (upper row) and the Gliese 581 system (lower row).

Based on a diagram by Franck Selsis, Univ. of Bordeaux. Credit: ESO

Wolf 1061c
The planet, more than four times the mass of the Earth, is one of three that the team detected around a red dwarf star called Wolf 1061.
"It is a particularly exciting find because all three planets are of low enough mass to be potentially rocky and have a solid surface,
and the middle planet, Wolf 1061c, sits within the 'Goldilocks' zone where it might be possible for liquid water --
and maybe even life -- to exist," says lead study author UNSW's Dr. Duncan Wright.

Published on Jan 23, 2013
Visit my website - the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will allow detailed analysis of exoplanets and their atmospheres. It will also be used in our own solar system for study of the outer planets, moons, comets, and asteroids. Please rate and comment, thanks!
Video Credits: NASA GSFC
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Video News File: Kepler Discovers First Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone of Another Star

Published on Apr 17, 2014
[Video News File; media resource preview]
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a distant star,
an area where liquid water might exist on its surface. The planet, Kepler-186f, is ten percent larger in size than Earth and orbits its parent star,
Kepler-186, every 130 days. The star, located about 500 light-years from Earth, is classified as an M1 dwarf and is half the size and mass of our sun.

Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting)

The graphic tells NASA's Kepler spacecraft's story by the numbers from the moment it began hunting for planets
outside our solar system on May 12, 2009. From the trove of data collected, we have learned that planets are common,
that most sun-like stars have at least one planet and that nature makes planets with unimaginable diversity.
Image credit: NASA Ames/W Stenzel

Time-lapse video of WASP-43b over one planet rotation

Located 260 light-years away, exoplanet WASP-43b is no place to call home. It is a world of extremes,
where seething winds howl at the speed of sound from a 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit day side, hot enough to melt steel,
to a pitch-black night side with plunging temperatures below 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to make the most detailed global map yet of the thermal glow from this turbulent world.

NASA | 'Disk Detectives' Top 1 Million Classifications in Search for Planetary Habitats

Published on Jan 6, 2015
Citizen scientists using the NASA-sponsored website DiskDetective.org have logged 1 million classifications
of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO). This data will help provide a crucial set of targets for
future planet-hunting missions.
By combing through objects identified in an infrared survey made with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission,
Disk Detective aims to find two types of developing planetary environments: YSO disks, which are less than 5 million years old and contains
large quantities of gas, and debris disks, which tend to be older than 5 million years, and contain belts of rocky or icy debris.

FIRST SUPER-EARTH ATMOSPHERE DETECTED

Astronomers have a detected a hydrogen-rich atmosphere around super-Earth 55-Cancri e,

once called the "Diamond Planet." It orbits very close to its host star, and has a surface
temperature exceeding 1700 C. Illustration.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

Simulated Atmosphere of a Hot Gas Giant

The turbulent atmosphere of a hot, gaseous planet known as HD 80606b is shown in this simulation based
on data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The planet spends most of its time far away from its star, but every 111 days,
it swings extremely close to the star, experiencing a massive burst of heat. Spitzer measured the whole heating cycle of this planet,
determining its coolest (less than 400 degrees Fahrenheit) and hottest (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech

Hubble Directly Measures Rotation of Cloudy ‘Super-Jupiter’

This is a composite image of the brown dwarf object 2M1207 (blue-white) and the planet 2M1207b,
seen in red, located 170 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
The photo is based on three near-infrared exposures with the taken with the 8.2-m VLT Yepun telescope
at the ESO Paranal Observatory. Credit: ESO

Exoplanet 2M1207 b with the Solar System planet Jupiter for comparison. Although four times more massive than the Jovian planet,
gravity compresses its matter to keep it relatively small. Credit: Wikipedia / Aldaron

KELT-4Ab: Hot Jupiter Exoplanet Found in Triple Stellar System
Apr 4, 2016 by Sergio Prosta
An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a transiting
hot Jupiter in a rare triple-star system.

Astronomers are going to start looking somewhere completely different for aliens

After years of scanning the skies without spotting anything, alien-hunting scientists
are going to start looking somewhere completely different.
April 5, 2016
reddwarf2.jpgRed dwarf stars to be examined for alien life by SETI Institute astronomers
Red dwarf stars have usually been ignored by alien-hunting scientists, but new research suggests they could support life

Astronomers are going to start looking somewhere completely different for aliens

An artist’s conception shows a planetary system around a red dwarf star. (Credit: ESO)

The Last Star in the Universe – Red Dwarfs Explained

Published on Jan 31, 2016
The last star in the universe will be a red dwarf. Red dwarfs in general might be great places to look for aliens – or planets for humans to find a new home after our solar system has died.
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Artist’s impression shows a sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc

Is there life on other planets, somewhere in this enormous Universe? That’s probably the most compelling question we can ask.
A lot of space science and space missions are pointed directly at that question.
The Kepler mission is designed to find exoplanets, which are planets orbiting other stars. More specifically,
its aim is to find planets situated in the habitable zone around their star. And it’s done so.
The Kepler mission has found 297 confirmed and candidate planets that are likely in the habitable zone of their star,
and it’s only looked at a tiny patch of the sky.

BAYESIAN ANALYSIS RAINS ON EXOPLANET LIFE PARADE

This artist’s impression shows a sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc.
The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system.
The other two more distant stars, Gliese 667 A and B, appear to the right in the sky.
(Credit: L. Calcada / ESO)

Light Echoes Give Clues to Protoplanetary Disk

This illustration shows a star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. Material from the thick disk flows along
the star’s magnetic field lines and is deposited onto the star’s surface. When material hits the star, it lights up brightly.
The star's irregular illumination allows astronomers to measure the gap between the disk and the star by using a
technique called "photo-reverberation" or "light echoes." First, astronomers look at how much time it takes for light from
the star to arrive at Earth. Then, they compare that with the time it takes for light from the star to bounce off the
inner edge of the disk and then arrive at Earth. That time difference is used to measure distance, as the speed of light is constant.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Last Updated: April 26, 2016
Editor: Tony Greicius

Astronomers can use light echoes to measure the distance from a star to its surrounding protoplanetary disk.
This diagram illustrates how the time delay of the light echo is proportional to the distance between the star
and the inner edge of the disk.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

An artistic representation of Gliese 832 c against a stellar nebula background.
A new paper says Gliese 832 might be home to another planet similar to this, but in the habitable zone.
Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, NASA/Hubble, Stellarium.

Astronomers Create Thermal Map of Super-Earth 55 Cancri e

Published on Mar 30, 2016
The most detailed map of a small, rocky ‘super Earth’ to date reveals a planet almost completely covered by lava,
with a molten ‘hot’ side and solid ‘cool’ side. Read more:
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Using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have mapped how conditions on
55 Cancri e – a ‘nearby’ super-Earth exoplanet – change throughout a complete orbit.

New Tool Refines Exoplanet Search

An artist’s conception of an exoplanet courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
- See more

The tool that allowed the team to improve planet hunting in the near-infrared—a cell that contains methane gas. Image is courtesy of Peter Plavchan.
- See more

This Giant Planet Is So Huge It Makes Its Sun Spin Faster
The "hot Jupiter" is big enough and close enough to tidally influence its host star.​

Artist's impression of a hot Jupiter exoplanet.
Getty AFP
An international team of astronomers led by Kaloyan Penev of Princeton University recently discovered
a hot Jupiter exoplanet that seems to be speeding up the rotation of its host star. The planet, called HATS-18b,
is about 2,100 light-years away, and it is massive enough and close enough to its parent star to influence the star's
rotation with its gravity.

Exoplanet Kepler 186

Exoplanet Kepler 452B

Astrobiologists Make List of Biosignature Gases to Guide Search for Extraterrestrial Life
May 6, 2016 by Natali Anderson

This is an artist’s impression of an exoplanet. Image credit: Ron Miller.

According to a team of scientists led by Prof. Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
gases emitted by alien life forms on habitable extrasolar planets could be detected remotely by telescopes,
but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the atmosphere of our planet.

Artist’s impression of two super-Earths in the same system as a Neptune-sized exoplanet in the Kepler-62 system.
Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

Kepler-69c

This artist's concept depicts Kepler-69c, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
-See more

The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69, a two-planet system about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
-See more

LIFE ON KEPLER-62F?

Exoplanet Kepler 62f would need an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide for water to be in liquid form.
Artist's Illustration: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

The Kepler 80 system

Image: This animation shows the position of the five planets of Kepler-80 whenever the outer two planets
(green and red) pass by one another, about every 27 days
over the course of four years of observations by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Due to the rare synchronized nature
of the system, the middle two planets (blue and purple) also return to almost exactly the same location.
The innermost planet (yellow) is not synchronized and hence is found at a random location every 27 days.
MacDonald et al. 2016 were able to show that this pattern indicates formation by “migration,”
where the orbits shrink very slightly over time. The orbits are to scale with each other, but the planets are shown 50 times larger.
The outer four planets are all about 4-6 times the mass of the Earth. The inner three planets
( blue, purple, and yellow)
appear rocky and the outer two planets (green and red ) are likely rocky with a very puffy Hydrogen/Helium atmosphere. Credit: MacDonald/Ragozzine/FIT.

Kepler-223 star system has four mini-Neptunes in synchronised orbits

Orbital evolution in Kepler-223

Published on May 11, 2016
These animations show approximately 200,000 years of orbital evolution in the Kepler-223 planetary system.
The planets’ interactions with the disk of gas and dust in which they formed caused their orbits to shrink
toward their star over time at differing rates. Once two planets reach a resonant state (for example, one planet orbits
its star three times every time the next planet orbits two times), the planets strongly interact with each other.
The interactions become apparent in the animations as the orbits shrink (left and top right) when the orbital period ratios of
neighboring planets (bottom right) get stuck at constant values. Even as the planets continue moving inwards (upper right) they do
so in concert, migrating together locked in this configuration. They also cause each other’s orbits to change from nearly circular to elliptical.
This is represented by the varying orbits on the left panel and the spread of the orbital distances for each individual planet in the upper right.
(Credit: Daniel Fabrycky and Cezary Migazewski)
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Rare 4-planet system discovered by Kepler
UC Berkeley

Published on May 12, 2016
For the full story, visit:
A four-planet system observed several years ago by the Kepler spacecraft is actually a rarity: Its planets, all miniature Neptunes nestled close
to the star, are orbiting in a unique resonance that has been locked in for billions of years. For every three orbits of the outermost planet,
the second orbits four times, the third six times and the innermost eight times.
Such orbital resonances are not uncommon – our own dwarf planet Pluto orbits the sun twice during the same period that Neptune completes
three orbits – but a four-planet resonance is.
Astronomers from the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley, who are reporting the discovery online May 11
in Nature, are particularly interested in this stellar system because our system’s four giant planets –
Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus – are thought to have once been in resonant orbits that were disrupted sometime during their 4.5-billion-year
history.
According to co-author Howard Isaacson, a UC Berkeley research astronomer, the Kepler-223 star system can help us understand how our solar system
and other stellar systems discovered in the past few decades formed. In particular, it could help resolve the question of whether planets stay
in the same place they formed, or whether they move closer to or farther from their star over the eons.
Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally
Simulations by Daniel Fabrycky and Cezary Migazewski
Music: "Candlepower" by Chris Zabriskie
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Kepler-223 is a G5V star in the constellation Cygnus with a unique exoplanetary system discovered by the Kepler mission.
Image credit: Aladin/Digitised Sky Survey — STScI/NASA, Coloured & Healpixed by CDS.

The arrangement and relative sizes of the four planets around Kepler-223, though not to scale. One AU (astronomical unit) is 93 million miles,
the distance between Earth and Sun in our solar system. Image credit: UC Berkeley.

The 8:6:4:3 orbital resonance of the four Neptune-sized planets in the Kepler-223 system. Animation credit: W.Rebel, Wikimedia Commons.

ASTRONOMERS DISCOVER EXOPLANET WITH TRIPLE SUNRISES AND SUNSETS

This graphic shows the orbit of the planet in the HD 131399 system (red line)
and the orbits of the stars(blue lines).
The planet orbits the brightest star in the system, HD 131399A. Credit: ESO

This composite image shows the newly discovered exoplanet HD 131399Ab in the triple-star system HD 131399.
The image of the planet was obtained with the SPHERE imager. This is the first exoplanet to be discovered by SPHERE
and one of very few directly-imaged planets. This picture was created from two separate SPHERE observations:
one of the three stars and one to detect the faint planet. The planet appears vastly brighter in this image than in would
in reality in comparison to the stars. Credit: ESO/K. Wagner et al.

This artist’s impression shows a view of the triple star system HD 131399
from close to the giant planet orbiting in the system.
The planet is known appears at the lower-left of the picture. Credit: ESO / L. Calcada

HD 131399Ab – an exoplanet with three suns

Published on Jul 7, 2016
Some 320 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur),
the planet HD 131399Ab orbits around a star in a triple-star system. HD 131399Ab
is about 16 million years old, one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date,
and has an estimated mass of four Jupiter masses. An observer on HD 131399Ab would either
experience constant daylight or enjoy triple sunrises and sunsets each day, depending on the seasons,
which last longer than human lifetimes.
Credit:
ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)
ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser
ESO/K. Wagner et al.
ESO/L. Calçada

THREE NEW EARTH-SIZED PLANETS FOUND JUST 40 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY

VISIT the Trappist SYSTEM!!

Location of TRAPPIST-1 in the constellation Aquarius. Credit: ESO/IAU and Sky & Telescope.

Structure of the TRAPPIST-1 exosystem. The green is the star’s habitable zone. Credit: PHL.

Artist’s impression of the view from the most distant exoplanet discovered around the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser.

Image: Comparison between the Sun and the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Credit: ESO.
That’s a useful insight because we have no other information about the nature of these planets.
Their masses have not been measured, and we have no other data about the kind of planets that can exist
around ultracool dwarf stars (TRAPPIST-1 is an M8 dwarf) because the TRAPPIST-1 worlds are our first transiting example.
The excerpt below shows the team’s reasoning, building on the fact that the lack of features in the combined spectrum
rules out certain kinds of atmospheres:

Image: The binary transit visualized. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScl.
With an extended gas envelope ruled out, we wind up with a range of possible atmospheres,
ranging from the CO2-dominated Venus to an Earth-like atmosphere with heavy clouds or a depleted atmosphere
like what we see on Mars. To push further into the possibilities, the team has formed a consortium called
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets Eclipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), the good news being that they are building
larger versions of the TRAPPIST instrument in Chile that will focus on the brightest ultracool dwarf stars in the southern hemisphere.
Consider the effort an attempt to build the kind of pre-screening tools that our future space telescopes like the
James Webb instrument will need for their target list.
The paper is de Wit et al., “A combined transmission spectrum of the Earth-sized exoplanets TRAPPIST-1 b and c,” Nature 20 July 2016 (preprint).
The discovery paper is Gillon et al., “Temperate Earth-sized Planets Transiting a Nearby Ultracool Dwarf Star,”
published online in Nature 2 May 2016 (abstract). An MIT news release is available

Seven New Earth Sized Worlds Discovered?

Artist’s concept showing what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes,
masses and orbital distances.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA & TRAPPIST-1: A Treasure Trove of Planets Found

Published on Feb 22, 2017
Seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1.
Three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone.
Over 21 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the drop in light as each planet passed in front of the star.
Spitzer was able to identify a total of seven rocky worlds, including three in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be found.
The video features interviews with Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center, Caltech/IPAC; Nikole Lewis,
James Webb Space Telescope project scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute; and Michaël Gillon, principal investigator,
TRAPPIST, University of Liege, Belgium.
The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based
TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope, as well as other ground-based observatories.
The system was named for the TRAPPIST telescope.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena.
Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado.
Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at Caltech/IPAC. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more information about Spitzer,
NASA SPITZERCALTECH SPITZER
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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A plot of diameter versus the amount of sunlight hitting the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system,
scaled by the size of the Earth and the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth.
Credit: F. Marchis/H. Marchis

Published on Aug 24, 2016
Big news! Astronomers have confirmed that there's an exoplanet orbiting the nearest star to the Sun:
Proxima Centauri. And better than that, this world is located within the star's habitable zone,
which means that there could be liquid water on its surface, and even life.
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Artist’s impression of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri.
The double star Alpha Centauri AB is visible to the upper right of Proxima itself.
Credit: ESO

Infographic comparing the orbit of the planet around Proxima Centauri (Proxima b)
with the same region of the Solar System. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/G. Coleman

A view of the southern skies over the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile,
showing the location of Proxima Centauri in the sky.
Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO/ESA/NASA/M. Zamani

Discovery of a Planet around our Nearest Star: Proxima b

Published on Aug 24, 2016
Dr Guillem Anglada gives the first remote Cool Worlds video to explain the very special discovery
announced today by his team - a planet orbiting our nearest star. Dr Guillem Anglada walks you through the
journey of discovery and what this detection means to him. Make sure you check out the Pale Red Project website below!
Links from the video:
- Pale Red Project:
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This artist's illustration shows a planet circling a pair of distant red dwarf stars,
representing the the system OGLE-2007-BLG-349 system, about 8,000 lightyears from Earth.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI).

The Hubble Space Telescope. Image: NASA

The J1407B system

Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b.
Credit: Ron Miller

Artist’s impression of what the rings around J1407b would look like from Earth if they were placed around Saturn.
The rings can be seen above the Old Leiden Observatory.
Credit: M. Kenworthy / Leiden University

Flying through the Ross 128 planetary system

This artist’s impression video shows the temperate planet Ross 128 b along with its red dwarf parent star.
This planet, which lies only 11 light-years from Earth, was found by a team using ESO’s
unique planet-hunting HARPS instrument. The new world is now the second-closest temperate planet to be
detected after Proxima b. It is also the closest planet to be discovered orbiting an inactive red dwarf star,
which may increase the likelihood that this planet could potentially sustain life. Ross 128 b will be a prime
target for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to search for biomarkers in this planet’s atmosphere.
More information and download options:

A temperate planet has been discovered only 11 light-years from Earth by a team using ESO’s unique planet-hunting HARPS instrument.
The new world has the designation Ross 128 b and is now the second-closest temperate planet to be detected after Proxima b.
It is also the closest planet to be discovered orbiting an inactive red dwarf star, which may increase the likelihood that this planet
could potentially sustain life. Ross 128 b will be a prime target for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able
to search for biomarkers in the planet's atmosphere.
This short video explains the discovery and its significance.
The video is available in 4K UHD.
The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces.
The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with
current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases.
More information and download options:Subscribe to ESOcast in iTunes!Receive future episodes on YouTube by pressing the Subscribe button above or follow us on Vimeo:Watch more ESOcast episodes:Find out how to view and contribute subtitles for the ESOcast in multiple languages, or translate this video on YouTube:
Credit:
ESO.
Editing: Nico Bartmann.
Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida.
Written by: Rosa Jesse, Nicole Shearer and Richard Hook.
Music: Music written and performed by STAN DART (www.stan-dart.com).
Footage and photos: ESO, Digitized Sky Survey 2, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, A. Santerne, ACe Consortium.
Directed by: Nico Bartmann.
Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen.
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Artist’s impression of a super-Earth with a dense atmosphere,
which is what scientists now believe K2-18b is.
Credit: NASA/JPL

The HD-7924 system

A NEW PLANETARY SYSTEM HAS BEEN FOUND WITH THREE SUPER EARTHS

Artist’s impression of a view from the HD 7924 planetary system looking back toward our sun,
which would be easily visible to the naked eye. Since HD 7924 is in our northern sky,
an observer looking back at the sun would see objects like the Southern Cross
and the Magellanic Clouds close to our sun in their sky.
Credit: Karen Termaura and BJ Fulton, UH IfA

The super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e, depicted with its star in this artist’s concept,
likely has an atmosphere thicker than Earth’s but with ingredients that could be similar
to those of Earth’s atmosphere.
Credit: NASA/JPL

The newly-discovered exoplanet K2-229b is 20% larger than Earth, but has a composition like Mercury(Above).
Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/USGS/Arizona State University

Artist’s concept of a collision between two large astronomical objects, which may have been how K2-229b formed.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The ELIAS-24 system

Thanks to the ALMA Observatory

SIMULATED VIEW OF A NEWLY FORMING PLANETARY SYSTEM WITH RINGS AND GAPS

A model of the dust ring around the young star Elias 24, produced from simulations
based on new ALMA millimeter images of the system. The model finds that the dust
was shaped by a planet with 70% of Jupiter's mass located about 60 Astronomical Units from the star.
Credit: Dipierro et al. 2018

Artist’s impression of circumstellar disc of debris around a distant star.
Credit: NASA/JPL

STUNNING FIRST EVER PHOTOGRAPH OF A NEWLY FORMING PLANET

This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope
is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70.
Credit: ESO/A. Müller et al.

Near infrared image of the PDS70 disk obtained with the SPHERE instrument.
Credit: ESO/A. Müller, MPIA

Astronomers using the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured the first clear image
of a planet caught in the act of forming in the dusty disc surrounding a young star.
The young planet is carving a path through the primordial disc of gas and dust around
the very young star PDS 70. The data suggest that the planet’s atmosphere is cloudy.
The video is available in 4K UHD.
The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe
in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard,
longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases.
More information and download options:Subscribe to ESOcast in iTunes!
Receive future episodes on YouTube by pressing the Subscribe button
above or follow us on Vimeo:Watch more ESOcast episodes:
Find out how to view and contribute subtitles for the ESOcast in multiple languages,
or translate this video on YouTube:
Credit:
ESO
Directed by: Nico Bartmann.
Editing: Nico Bartmann.
Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida.
Written by: Calum Turner and Mariya Lyubenova.
Music: Tim Turusov (www.turusov.com).
Footage and photos: ESO, UHD Team, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS, L. Calçada, spaceengine.org and M. Kornmesser.
Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen.

This sequence takes the viewer towards the southern constellation of Centaurus.
We zoom in on the orange dwarf star PDS 70. The final shot shows the spectacular new image
of the planet PDS 70b cleaving a path through the planet-forming material surrounding the young star.
More information and download options:
Credit:
ESO, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS. Music: Astral electronic.
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The HR4796A system

Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a vast, complex dust structure,
about 150 billion miles across, enveloping the young star HR 4796A.
Image:NASA/ESA/G. Schneider (Univ. of Arizona)

The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a vast, complex dust structure surrounding the star HR 4769A.
The bright, inner ring is well-known to astronomers, but the huge dust structure surrounding
the whole system is a new discovery.
Image: NASA/ESA/G. Schneider (Univ. of Arizona)

Here are 20 Protoplanetary Disks, With Newly Forming Planets
Carving Out Gaps in the Gas and Dust

The hunt for other planets in our galaxy has heated up in the past few decades,
with 3869 planets being detected in 2,886 systems and another 2,898 candidates awaiting confirmation.
Though the discovery of these planets has taught scientists much about the kinds of planets
that exist in our galaxy, there is still much we do not know about the process of planetary formation.

This artist’s conception shows a newly formed star surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk
of dust and gas.
Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave

mage of the HL Tau planet-forming disk taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array.
Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Be sure to enjoy this animation of what a protoplanetary disk
looks like, courtesy of the NRAO Outreach program:

Geothermal Heating Could Make Life Possible on the
Super Earth Planet at Barnard’s Star

In 2018, scientists announced the discovery of a extrasolar planet orbiting Barnard’s star,
an M-type (red dwarf) that is just 6 light years away. Using the Radial Velocity method,
the research team responsible for the discovery determined that this exoplanet (Barnard’s Star b)
was at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth and experienced average surface temperatures
of about -170 °C (-274 °F) – making it both a “Super-Earth” and “ice planet”.

The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth
— a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes,
including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world.
The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits
the fastest moving star in the night sky..
This artist’s impression pans over the surface of this freezing, shadowy world.
More information and download options:
Credit:
ESO/M. Kornmesser

ESOcast 184 Light: Super-Earth Orbiting Barnard’s Star (4K UHD)

The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth
-- a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting
HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the
second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits the fastest moving star in the night sky.
The video is available in 4K UHD.
The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces.
The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them
with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases.
This video is available for download in various formats on: